World's largest "psychedelic church" to shut down San Francisco location
From the outside, Zide Door is a plain, inconspicuous building in San Francisco with no signs or indication that it is a psychedelic church on the inside.
If you make it past the 24/7 security guard, you are greeted by walls covered in trippy art and a faint smell of cannabis. At first glance, the spiritual center does not look like a typical church with pews and an altar but more like an art gallery.
However, Zide Door is set to shut down its San Francisco location by the end of this year due to alleged "harassment from the Planning Department" of the city, said the church's pastor Dave Hodges in a press conference Wednesday.
Hodges said that officials in the city's Planning Department have unfairly targeted its San Francisco location with mandates for structural updates to the building that would cost the church a six-figure dollar amount to repair.
"One of the biggest things that we're dealing with right now has to do with windows that constantly get broken," Hodges said. "We have boards over that right now, but the city is saying that's unacceptable and that the only solution is that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix the problem. This is a problem that many small businesses have in San Francisco and we're just another victim of what's been going on."
Members of Zide Door follow a faith called the Church of Ambrosia, which believes that entheogenic plants, or psychoactive substances such as psilocybin mushrooms and DMT, can be used for "access to the divine," Hodges said.
"We are the world's largest entheogenic church. We now have 120,000 members. We provide cannabis, mushrooms and DMT as a sacrament for people," Hodges said. "We make sure that there's a safe way people can access them and information for them to do it safely."
Psychedelics are illegal in California. However, San Francisco has passed non-binding resolutions to decriminalize the drugs and make the possession or use of entheogenic substances the lowest priority to local law enforcement.
In the 20 months that Zide Door has opened its doors in San Francisco, Hodges said that it has experienced numerous conflicts with the Planning Department and the Department of Building Inspection around acquiring permits and meeting building codes in order to operate in its building on Howard Street in the South of Market neighborhood.
Many of the mandated structural upgrades, Hodges said, were not enforced or required before the church began occupying the space.
Zide Door rents the building from owner Tatiana Takaeva Shiff, who echoed the pastor's beliefs that the Planning Department is unfairly targeting the church.
"I have had every problem with the Planning Department ever since Zide Door came here," she said in an interview.
The first problem was a "sliding glass-door that led to nowhere" on the second floor of the building.
Hodges complied and thought it was an understandable issue to address. The church spent $100,000 to fix it, he said.
"We agreed that that was a problem for the building. It was just something somebody needed to fix at some point," Hodges said. "It was an expensive fix."
But then more issues continued to pop up. The latest one involved covering the ground floor windows, which have been repeatedly shattered by vandals.
"They say we need 'ingressed' shutters or security shades that we would have to put all over the windows," Hodges said. "We can't afford it."
Hodges feels that the church is being unfairly targeted by the Planning Department and Department of Building Inspection.
"Our biggest concern is, even if we were to be able to afford the 'ingressed' shutters, that they would just come up with another problem after that," he said.
Daniel Sider, the chief of staff for the Planning Department, said in an interview that the church began operating without acquiring the required permits.
"This establishment opened for business without seeking any necessary permits," Sider said. "City agencies have been working with Pastor Hodges' representatives since the spring to help them legalize."
Hodges does not have a clear answer to why he thinks the city is allegedly taking aim at Zide Door.
"There's a lot of people that, for one reason or another, don't like the idea of people using mushrooms as part of a religion, and that might be it. I really can't tell you what's going through somebody else's head," he said.
Zide Church also has a location in Oakland, a city that Hodges said has been much easier to work with.
"Oakland has been a lot friendlier to us for the most part," he said. "Except we did get raided in August of 2020 by the Oakland Police Department."
The church's original site in Oakland was raided over allegations that it was operating a cannabis dispensary.
As Zide Door shuts down in San Francisco, it will continue operating in Oakland. Hodges is open to returning to San Francisco if changes can be made in the Planning Department and Department of Building Inspection under the incoming mayor-elect Daniel Lurie.
"I really hope that the mayor can make some changes," Hodges said. "It's just a matter of how long it'll take. We're not in a position where we can just wait months and months only for it to be the same. So I really hope he will make a difference."